“The Walt Whitman Controversy” by Mark Twain

For many years Twain scholars and aficionados (affectionately known as “Twainiacs”) wondered what Mark Twain thought of censorship and book banning when it happened in his lifetime and speculated what he might think of its continuation since his death in 1910. It may well be that the answer to these burning questions is in the long-time unpublished piece Twain wrote in 1882 entitled “The Walt Whitman Controversy.” A facsimile of the manuscript of this piece generously provided by Robert Hirst of the Mark Twain Project (marktwainproject.org) of the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley is on display—as are significant editions of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Twain’s 1601, and the recently published Gribben [NewSouth] edition Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

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